Date of issue when converting your EU driving licence to an Irish driving licence

dualamann

Hi,
I'm shopping for insurance for an EU friend who holds an EU driving license. It's their first time being insured in their own name but they have many years of named driving experience.

Running the insurance quotes online, it looks like the cost of insurance with an Irish driving license is about 20-40% less (YMMV depending on car, circumstances, ...).

I've checked citizensinformation about "swapping" an EU for an Irish license. One questions remains unanswered: what is the date of issue when going through this procedure. Does the license get "issued" for the swap date or the original license issue date?

For example, if the license in the EU country was issued in 2005 (the date they passed their own test back home), would the new Irish license be set at "today" (2019) or the original 2005 date? My shiny new NDLS license shows my original "pass" date for example.

Thanks

Lumen

On my UK originated Irish license, the issue date on the front is 2017 but the Valid From dates on the back are 1992 for the car and truck categories, but 2017 for the motorbike categories which I got in Ireland.

For insurance purposes they surely care about how long you've held that licence category for the vehicle you're insuring.

dualamann

Lumen wrote: »

For insurance purposes they surely care about how long you've held that licence category for the vehicle you're insuring.

I reckon there's probably a few letters and forms to fill out if the date didn't go all the way back, I was really just curious how they dealt with the issue date on what would be a "new" license.

Thanks for the detail about 1992/UK conversion.

CiniO

You get a original issuing date for each category, so in your example if category B was issued back home in 2005, then on Irish licence it will be shown as valid from 2005.

dualamann

I managed to track down the NDLS by email and then by phone. The agents I dealt with were not at all clear about what's going on. One thing they did say, which I'm sharing for anyone who happens on this post via a search, is that "likely" the date will be what was on your original licence. Second, you can request a separate document to state your driving history. This is not publicised, but since it's there and the response about dates wasn't clear, I think it's important to have for insurance, car rental and any other use of a license.

Finally, and brexit was blamed for this, current wait time for your Irish license is a 12 week minimum, but usually about 8 weeks. You must hand over your old license to get a new one, so this means that you're in a grey area at best if you need to drive and you get pulled over.

wonski

Drivers are exchanging their license for years, you are overthinking this.

Issue date is issue date.

Nothing else.

You don't need separate document when renting a car as the original date will be on your license.

Exchange time depends on where the license was originally issued due to brexit, but not only. There are thousands of fake eu licenses in circulation and it takes time to confirm if license is legit

dualamann

Thanks @wonski for that clarification. I wish the NDLS were as clear!! They couldn't decide if the issue date relates to the original license or the irish version.

The trap, of course, is that you lose the original license while they're "processing" the new irish one